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Concerns over product provider distribution deals

Product providers are paying significant sums of money to distributors as part of longterm distribution deals arranged ahead of the implementation of the RDR.

Money Marketing has seen an email sent by former Aegon director of partnership and distribution development Peter Dornan to Caerus Capital Group, the venture set up by ex-Openwork chief executive Keith Carby.

The email outlines details of £2m to be paid over a five-year period for “sales and marketing activity to support our partnership”. Aegon and Caerus have a single-tie pension arrangement in place.

The email says: “I am pleased to confirm our intent to agree a programme of activity to support the development of our partnership. We would anticipate making payments to your company totalling £2m over a five-year period for sales and marketing activity to support our partnership. Our intent is based on our partnership launching on the terms previously discussed, developing and enduring for the full five years.”

An Aegon spokeswoman says: “In common with many product providers, and in line with growing market practice, Aegon has commercial arrangements with key adviser group partners. Although we would not comment on individual arrangements, we can confirm that we have a single-tie arrangement in place with Caerus Wealth Management and provide commercial services to Caerus consistent with market practice. However, the letter obtained by Money Marketing is historic and does not reflect the final commercial terms on which the arrangement was made.”

Caerus Capital Group chief executive Carby says: “Caerus, like every other substantial advisory business, is supported by its product providers in line with FSA guidelines. All such arrangements between Caerus and its product providers are compliant.”

It is understood that a number of other distributors offer similar payment arrangements with providers with which they have single-tie deals.

Money Marketing has also seen a document from Sesame Bankhall circulated to providers ahead of formally inviting them to tender to be part of the group’s forthcoming restricted advice proposition.

The “request for information” document includes the question: “What sales and marketing support (over and above normal activity) would you offer to ensure the benefits this proposition can bring are maximised?”

Sesame Bankhall declined to expand on what this extra support could entail.

Payments between providers and big distributors are commonplace in the industry and are often used to pay for joint marketing ventures and events.

For example, other documents seen by Money Marketing include an invoice from support service firm SimplyBiz to a provider for £36,250 as part of a “strategic relationship agreement” for the period July to September, an invoice from support service firm Threesixty for £34,800 as part of a “provider partnership package” for the third quarter and an invoice from network and national Lighthouse Group for £23,400 as part of a “strategic partnership programme” and “participation as a tactical partner” for the period of July 1 to September 30.

He says: “We have a package like that with most providers. It is nothing to do with the receiving of business. It is about paying for advertising space across a series of different advertising routes. From our perspective, we are a non-regulated business with no advisers. This is payment for placing an advert or running competitions with members.”

Threesixty commercial director Phil Young says the firm bills for provider-sponsored events that Threesixty runs for advisers. Young says: “There is not a single penny that we take and retain. Money gets paid on to people but we do not generate any income. No payments are in any way connected to panel positions or anything like that, we have got to be squeaky clean.

“From a regulatory perspective, we are not allowed to make any profit from that in any way. We do not generate any income from it. We have to have audited accounts, we have to ensure and inform providers that there cannot be any profit. It is literally covering specific costs.”

Lighthouse declined to comment.

The FSA’s final rules on adviser-charging under the RDR, published in March 2010, state that, from 2013, adviser firms can accept client charges but will not be able to accept “any other commission, remuneration or benefit of any kind in relation to any personal recommendation that they make or service related to it”.

Firms will also be prevented from accepting third-party payments or benefits that will “impair compliance with their duty to act in the best interests of the client”.

An FSA spokeswoman says: “Contracts would need to reflect current FSA rules. If you have got a contract that is written now, it needs to reflect the rules as they stand now but everybody knows those rules are going to be changing at the end of 2012. We would be expecting to see different contracts.”

She added that the FSA would be concerned if payments linked to specific distribution deals continued after the RDR.

The FSA wrote a Dear CEO letter to banks, building societies, insurers, fund managers and networks in June 2004 over concerns that inducement payments were being paid by providers to advisers to secure distribution ahead of depolarisation. The letter said: “We have been told that, in some instances, product providers and intermediaries may be contemplating significant up-front payments, in some cases upwards of £1m, as a condition for the provider’s products being placed on, or even considered for, the intermediary’s panel or recommended list.

“We consider such payments would not be consistent with the standards of conduct for firms irrespective of whether they will be whole of market or multi-tied. Such introductory payments would be incompatible with the fundamental principle that a firm must not conduct business under arrangements that might give rise to a conflict with its duty to customers.”

Highclere Financial Services partner Alan Lakey says: “It is difficult to work out what is a genuine payment and what is not. Any company that is seeking to persuade someone by means of payment to put it on a panel is certainly not going to articulate that in a contract.

“The FSA has made it very clear that anything that could be perceived to be a form of commission or inducement would be wrong under adviser-charging. Unless a company can prove these deals are part of a justifiable commercial contract, then it would probably fall foul of FSA rules.”

Baronworth Investment Services director Colin Jackson says, given the sums involved, it should be relatively easy for the FSA to uncover a paper trail and investigate what the payments are being used for. He says: “I would be most surprised if payments linked to distribution were allowed to continue after the RDR as it completely flies in the face of the reforms.”

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19th December 20188:33 am

Comments

There are 3 comments at the moment, we would love to hear your opinion too.

Back in the early 1980’s (when I was quite young!!) I remember being told a story by the manager of an Insurance Company Broker Division about how he had to travel to London to recover a “soft loan” (an interest free loan made to a “broker” in return for levels of business) because such promised levels of business had not been delivered.

The “high profile” broker wrote our a cheque there and then for the £100,000 loan. It was only on the train journey back that the Broker Manager realised that the money had been sitting in an accout earning interest for two years and that the only winner was the broker.

Product providers are scared witless at the prospect of not receiving the volume of new business they currently enjoy, once the RDR commission ban comes into force.

They recognise that without some form of intervention, the prospect of acquiring new business is going to decline due to the removal of the commission payment for advice option.

Those who recognise what is going to occur, a decline in retail investment business and subsequent decline in capital available to the markets for business expansion, know this is the thin end of the wedge.

We will be lucky to have half a dozen Life offices survive this onslaught on our industry which the commission ban will produce.

RDR is not good for consumers, it is not good for the industry, it is not good for the economy, thus not good for the country’s future prosperity.

Stuff needs to be sold, advisers need to be remunerated and this remuneration needs to be affordable to the consumer.

I costed out how much in time it would take me to set up a £100 pm personal / stakeholder pension scheme under the advice regime (Whole of Market) that the FSA is insisting IFAs adhere to.

About 9 hrs in total start to finish. At £125 per hour this comes to £1125 in expected fees.

Anyone daft enough to pay £1125 for their iFA to set up a pension scheme will be very rare.

Expected commission on a trail / level basis of 5% pa this would take some 18yrs to ensure payment for services matched costs.

The lunatics are running the asylum at last and there is nothing we can do about it.

The difficulty is that the management teams of many of these advisory firms have been after “soft” payments for years….and do not want these disclosed to their advisors….all very murky when the sums get above a certain level.

All the fsa need do is work out who once worked for dunbar and follow the trail

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